Twitter
Advertisement

Professional parables from the pavement

THE HUMAN SIDE: Street vendors from different parts of the city speak about their successes, failures and struggles

Latest News
article-main
A local market sells fabrics, clothes and other wares
FacebookTwitterWhatsappLinkedin

A short walk from the Powai IIT gate sits Fathima Aneez’s vegetable stall. Aneez has been sitting at this stall since she was eight. Back then, she used to drop in after school and help out her parents, both of whom were vendors in the locality. “I loved to listen to customers speak English and picked up bits,” she smiles, adding most professors and staff members at the university come to her stall to buy vegetables.

It was in 2005 that the young hawker, who had recently turned activist and become general secretary of the Azaad Hawkers foundation met the women from a market Dadar West during a peaceful protest. “We were simply exercising our right. Until legitimate hawking zones and licences are distributed, they can’t evict us,” she claims.

As fate would have it, she was able to get better acquainted with the women vendors – many of whom were widows or senior citizens – in Byculla jail. “We spent Independence Day in jail for shouting Inquilab Zindabad and Bharat Mata Ki Jai,” she says, underlining the irony.

Among the women in jail with Aneez was Radhika Sampat Dohipode. Having come to Mumbai as a young girl, Dohipode took to hawking to support her children when her husband, left her for another woman. “I’ve fought for my rights all my life. Even the time I spent in jail was for my children, since I needed to earn for them,” says the clothes-seller, who operates from Dadar’s D’Silva Road pavement. Today, her children have their own businesses/jobs. But 65-year-old Dohipode who wants her independence commute from her Bhayander home to her spot daily. 

ALSO READ: Hawk. But not where I can gawk

Across Dadar Kabutarkhana, is Vaibhav Mhatre’s vada pav kiosk. He’s been at it since he was 14 and now only comes in every other day, only to network. He counts several important businessmen and Marathi actors among his clientele.


Vaibhav Mahatre at his vada pav stall in Dadar

He recollects how Sena politicos likes Manohar Joshi and Dattaji Nanawde visited the stall when his father started it in 1967. “He felt honour-bound to make the best vada pav at the lowest price. And that is a practice I’ve also kept.” 

Mhatre now also runs a real estate consultancy he started fearing how his father failed to get the stall registered in the first licensing drive in 1987. “I graduated in 2001 and got into the real estate business while manning the stall. Today, my five-year-old comes to the stall because he loves to be here,” he beams.

Aneez’s success story is no less spectacular. Though unable to pursue an LLB, she has been to multiple international conferences on street vendors, including one at Nairobi (2007) and one in Brazil (2011). As a member of National Association of Street Vendors of India’s executive panel, she works for the rights of hawkers across the country, while also educating them in customer relations, health, hygiene and laws. “I may not have earned much money in my line of work,” says Aneez, who runs her Powai stall with her brother and sister-in-law. “But I’ve earned a lot of respect.”

Find your daily dose of news & explainers in your WhatsApp. Stay updated, Stay informed-  Follow DNA on WhatsApp.
Advertisement

Live tv

Advertisement
Advertisement